Full-Time
Legal Counsel
Posted on 12/11/2025
Wayve
501-1,000 employees
Embodied AI autonomous driving software.
No salary listed
London, UK
Hybrid
Hybrid role; mix of office days in Central London and remote work.
 Legal & Compliance (2) |
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- Qualified solicitor in England and Wales or another major common law jurisdiction, ideally trained at a top law firm or in-house.
- Solid grounding in corporate and commercial law.
- Exposure to Mergers and Acquisitions transactions, ideally on both the buy and the sell side, with experience in drafting and reviewing deal documentation, due diligence and integration planning.
- Exposure to employee equity/compensation structures, ideally with an international aspect is strongly preferred.
- Exposure to HR and employment matters advising on day-to-day employee relations is preferred.
- Strong technical, drafting, legal research, and negotiation skills.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills and an ability to explain complex legal matters in clear, accessible language to non-lawyers.
- Strong commercial acumen and judgement to effectively evaluate legal risk in the context of the company’s wider strategy.
- Ability to work autonomously, take initiative and be proactive in addressing new challenges.
- Well-developed prioritisation skills and ability to deal with multiple projects and internal clients.
- Ability to collaborate with colleagues across teams and jurisdictions.
- Support on corporate governance and company secretarial matters not just in the United Kingdom but also across our global group of companies.
- Assist with M&A activity, including due diligence, drafting, and post-closing integration.
- Support on HR and other employment-related matters, including advising on employee relations issues, performance management, workplace investigations and supporting international teams with local counsel.
- Manage employee equity schemes including drafting and issuing grants, board minutes and resolutions, maintaining records and statutory filings, liaising with leadership and our People and Finance teams.
- Review and negotiate commercial contracts across suppliers, customers, and partners.
- Provide general legal support across the business, escalating complex issues appropriately.
- Draft policies and procedures and educate the business on compliance and best practices.
- Exposure to Mergers and Acquisitions transactions, ideally on both the buy and the sell side, with experience in drafting and reviewing deal documentation, due diligence and integration planning.
- Exposure to employee equity/compensation structures, ideally with an international aspect is strongly preferred.
- Exposure to HR and employment matters advising on day-to-day employee relations is preferred.
Wayve.ai builds autonomous driving technology, focusing on AV2.0. Its main offering is embodied AI software that lets vehicles learn from experience and adapt to new environments using end-to-end deep learning, without relying on explicit programming, HD maps, or complex robotic stacks. The product works by training a neural system that drives from sensor inputs to control outputs, enabling driving behavior to improve through real-world data and interactions instead of hand-engineered rules. Compared with traditional self-driving stacks that depend on heavy mappings and modular software, Wayve.ai aims to be lean and scalable, reducing cost and enabling faster deployment for automakers and fleet operators. Its goal is to enable safer, more sustainable mobility and to bring driving automation to scale through commercially viable partnerships with automotive manufacturers and delivery fleets.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
Series D
Total Funding
$2.6B
Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
Founded
2017
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- AMD, Arm, Qualcomm invested $60M in April 2026 for silicon integration.
- Nissan targets AI in 90% vehicles; Tokyo robotaxi pilot late 2026.
- London trials and multi-city data flywheel enhance AI performance.
What critics are saying
- Waymo expands to London, capturing UK market share this year.
- Baidu undercuts Tokyo pilot with cheaper manufacturing in 2026.
- Nissan cuts models and workforce, delaying robotaxi by late 2026.
What makes Wayve unique
- Wayve uses end-to-end deep learning for mapless autonomous driving.
- Embodied AI adapts to any vehicle without HD maps or lidar.
- Vision-based system learns from camera data across environments.
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Benefits
Hybrid Work Options
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 1%1 year growth
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↑ 3%The Institute for Driverless Transport event debates Britain's AV rollout. Engineers, lobbyists, taxi company representatives and experts converged on 1 Triton Square, London for Preparing for Driverless Cars: Exploring the Consequences for the UK - an event held in partnership with The Institute for Driverless Transport (IfDT). 2026 is set to be a year of sweeping changes as the UK as early implementation of sections the 2024 Autonomous Vehicle Act come into force, allowing AV pilots on Britain's roads for the first time. Waymo, Lyft and Uber (in partnership with Wayve and Baidu) have announced their intention to launch services this year. Round tables covered the opportunities and challenges of Geopolitics and Security, Productivity, Social Change, and Job Displacement. Quality of discussion was high, with lively critical debate across key topics, including remote control/access of AVs, implications for the insurance sector, the increased charging demands of electric AVs operating around the clock, and whether they will ultimately replace human operators entirely or simply carve out a complementary role alongside today's drivers. Christopher Court-Dobson
Wayve, the UK autonomous vehicle startup, has begun robotaxi trials in London following its $1.5 billion funding round earlier this year. The company is demonstrating its Level 3 autonomous technology to position itself as a contender in the capital's emerging robotaxi market. The startup recently provided test drives of its autonomous vehicles, showcasing its real-time capabilities to observers. Wayve's trials represent a significant step in bringing commercial autonomous taxi services to London's streets.
Wayve, Nissan unveil robotaxi ahead of Tokyo pilot. By Teresa De Alba | Jr Journalist & Industry Analyst - Fri, 03/20/2026 - 10:59 Wayve and Nissan will present a robotaxi prototype at NVIDIA GTC 2026, built on the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion architecture, marking a key milestone ahead of a planned pilot deployment with Uber in Tokyo starting in late 2026, subject to regulatory approvals. The companies said the prototype will serve as the baseline vehicle for the pilot program, part of a broader strategy to scale autonomous mobility services globally. The vehicle is based on the all-electric Nissan LEAF and integrates Nissan's vehicle engineering with Wayve's embodied artificial intelligence and NVIDIA's DRIVE Hyperion platform. Nissan said it is "developing a vehicle with fully redundant systems designed for robotaxi applications," targeting high levels of operational reliability and compliance with stringent autonomous safety standards. The system is engineered for Level 4 autonomy and utilizes dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor processors to enable real-time execution of advanced AI models. The platform runs on NVIDIA DriveOS and is supported by NVIDIA Halos, described as a comprehensive framework for functional safety and cybersecurity. According to the companies, the combined compute and sensor architecture is designed to meet the performance, redundancy and safety requirements necessary for autonomous driving in complex urban environments. The prototype incorporates a multi-layered sensor suite designed to ensure redundancy and full environmental awareness. It includes high-resolution cameras with 360-degree coverage, high-performance surround and forward imaging radar, and a forward-facing LiDAR system. The companies said this configuration provides complementary sensing modalities, enabling the AI system to interpret complex traffic scenarios and make driving decisions in real time. The platform also supports long-range sensing capabilities for data collection, validation and broader development use cases. Nissan indicated that further refinements are planned to prepare the vehicle for commercial robotaxi deployment. These include the integration of "intuitive in-cabin displays and communication systems" to enhance the passenger experience, signaling a parallel focus on user interface design alongside core autonomy functions. Wayve's AI Driver is based on an end-to-end embodied AI approach that processes sensor data directly into driving actions. The company emphasized that the system does not rely on high-definition maps, instead learning from real-world driving conditions to "understand complex traffic environments and make safe driving decisions in real time." The AI is designed to anticipate how traffic situations evolve and predict the downstream impact of its actions on other road users. The Tokyo pilot represents an initial deployment phase. Wayve and Uber said they plan to expand robotaxi trials to "more than 10 cities globally," with vehicles introduced progressively as validation milestones are achieved. The long-term objective is to transition from pilot programs with safety operators to fully scalable, commercially viable robotaxi services. Separately, Zoox and Uber announced a multiyear agreement to integrate Zoox robotaxis into the Uber app, marking the first time Zoox will offer rides through a third-party platform. The companies said Zoox vehicles will begin serving riders in Las Vegas this summer, with expansion planned to Los Angeles by mid-2027. In parallel, Uber Technologies said it will invest more than US$100 million to develop fast-charging hubs for autonomous vehicles in the United States.
Uber, Wayve and Nissan plan to launch a robotaxi service in Tokyo this year. Mar 12, 2026 - 08:00 Nissan will integrate Wayve's self-driving software into the Leaf with the goal of making the vehicles available on the Uber app in Tokyo.
Qualcomm and British self-driving startup Wayve have partnered to create an integrated AI system combining Wayve's "AI Driver" software with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride automotive chips. The platform aims to help carmakers rapidly deploy advanced driver-assistance and automated driving features across vehicle ranges. The system is designed to reduce complexity by integrating chips, safety systems and AI software from multiple suppliers, supporting features from hands-off assistance to advanced automated driving. It will scale across vehicle tiers and geographic markets, allowing manufacturers to standardise underlying technology. Founded in 2017, Wayve uses real-world driving data to train its AI model. The company raised $1.2 billion last month at an $8.6 billion valuation from investors including Mercedes-Benz, Nvidia, Nissan and Uber.